Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Robert McAllister wrote detailed letters to his wife Ellen and daughters Harriet and Sarah. The letters, many of which were later published, were donated to Rutgers in 1963. McAllister had strong opinions on military strategy and sometimes disagreed with his commanders, although he tried to be respectful. Here he describes the aftermath of the Fredericksburg fiasco: "To go and take those hights [sic] would be to sacrifice too much life. I am satisfied that it would cost us 50,000 lives. It is positively stated that we have already lost 10,000 men…I am not prepared to praise or condemn those in command. Time will tell us all. I am proud of my regiment. It is all that I could ask; a braver set of men I don’t want. It is a real fighting regiment."

Type: Exhibition case

Name: From Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville

Detail: In late 1862, General Ambrose Burnside, who had had some success at Roanoke Island and New Bern, North Carolina, replaced McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside devised a plan to go around Robert E. Lee and on to Richmond by crossing the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. For many of the recently recruited nine-month and three-year New Jersey regiments, including the Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth, and Twenty-eight, the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13 would be their first experience of warfare. By the end of the day, the Union army, unable to break through the Confederate defenses, had suffered one of the worst defeats of the war. The defeat caused low morale in the army and at home, and dissatisfaction with Burnside, who was replaced by Joseph Hooker in January 1863. In May, Hooker made another attempt to cross the Rappahannock upstream from Fredericksburg, in what became known as the Chancellorsville campaign.